Spy Camera Leeches Power from Fluorescent Light
While small, wirelessly connected webcams are nothing new, this small camera is actually powered by the soul-crushing white light that comes from the long fluorescent lights which are standard in pretty much every business in the world. Actually, its not powered by the light itself, but rather the magnetic field that these bulbs emit.
Recently, a client of ours almost terminated a project because the cost of connecting the new device to an outlet (or running new electrical wiring) to the gadget’s location was too high. While we were able to solve the problem in a different way, this could have been a great alternative.
Seeing how these lights are so pervasive (and more importantly, identical) across the world, its rather safe to assume that any gadget which connects to them can be installed in basically any business or government. So then, this could be a great development platform for making new powered devices which can be connected to the ceiling. The identical nature of these bulbs could be a great way to get around having to supply different power adapters for each country. Even further, the concept of using some existing magnetic field to power new sensors and add-on electronics could be applied to a bunch of other applications as well.
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/12/03/symbiotic-camera-cad.html
